Insider
- Eight top Olaplex employees have left the company since October, Insider has learned.
- The departures include two C-suite executives, as well as vice presidents.
- The brand is fighting falling sales and a lawsuit claiming that its products caused hair loss.
Top Olaplex employees have left the company in recent months as it faces falling sales and a lawsuit claiming its products caused hair loss.
Eight key employees, including two C-suite executives and three vice presidents, have left the company since October, according to an Insider review of recent announcements and a source who provided evidence that work accounts for those people had been deactivated.
Olaplex told Insider in a statement that the company is "actively hiring and dedicated to further building out our senior leadership and key business roles."
"We have grown tremendously in just a few years, and this year we're focused on continuing to strategically invest in our talent to position our company for long-term growth," the company said. "Employee changes are a standard part of any business and we are proud of the strong team that we've built with incredibly talented individuals."
Juliane Park, Olaplex's chief transformation officer, resigned from the company in March, according to a source familiar with the departure. In October, Tiffany Walden, the company's chief operating officer, left that role and vacated a seat on Olaplex's board, according to a company filing. Walden's LinkedIn profile says her tenure at Olaplex spanned multiple roles over nearly seven years.
The executive departures also include Crystal Kim, who was Olaplex's vice president of e-commerce until March, according to the source who was also familiar with Park's departure.
Heather Harper, the vice president of human resources, also appears to have left the company this year. Harper had started at Olaplex in 2019, according to a story in the outlet Profile this month. Her LinkedIn profile says she joined the online-game company Big Fish this year as vice president of people and culture. Harper declined to comment.
Kathy Lewis, Olaplex's vice president of education, had been on "contracted sabbatical" since December, according to her LinkedIn profile. The hair-care brand Wella said in a LinkedIn post last week that it hired Lewis as the vice president and global head of education.
Olaplex said it does not comment on "personnel changes or employment status."
Other former Olaplex employees whose LinkedIn profiles show recent departures include Brad Farrell, a senior manager of retention marketing; Reef Holland, the director of operations; and Gajan Haas, the director of research and development.
Holland, Haas, and Farrell declined to comment. The other employees did not respond to requests for comment.
Olaplex faces falling sales and a lawsuit
Olaplex experienced a period of rapid growth in 2021, when its net sales more than doubled to roughly $598 million from a year earlier, according to its 2021 annual report. In late 2021, the company went public and had 106 employees.
Olaplex grew its head count over the following year to 174 employees, according to its 10-K filing in February.
Beauty-industry recruiters who spoke with Insider said that kind of growth can impact recruiting and staffing.
"The company that Olaplex was three years ago is not the same company it is today," said Frances Mazur, the president of Mazur Group, which specializes in executive recruiting for the beauty industry. Olaplex has been one of its clients.
"It's typical to see a changing of the guard when you have that type of rapid growth and change, from a privately owned to public company," she said.
Senior-level roles can take months to fill, due to intensive vetting processes to identify the right candidates. Hiring for high-level technical roles can be particularly challenging, said Edouard Thoumyre, a managing partner at Accur Recruiting Services.
"R&D searches are complicated," Thoumyre said. "People in those roles don't move around as often as in sales and marketing roles, and you often have to relocate candidates who are successful."
Olaplex was founded in 2014 and began selling bond-building hair-care products directly to consumers online. The brand eventually expanded into physical retailers and gained popularity on TikTok.
But the company has faced some recent challenges. Olaplex's quarterly sales fell by 22% at the end of 2022, compared to the prior year, and the company slashed its forecast for 2023.
Olaplex is also defending itself against a lawsuit brought by more than 100 users who claim that the brand's products damaged their hair and made it fall out.
Olaplex has denied the allegations and posted reports of clinical testing that the company says proves its products are safe. Experts have told Insider that proving a correlation between hair loss and specific hair products will be difficult. Even so, other hair-care brands, such as DevaCurl, have paid settlements in similar cases without admitting fault.
Do you work at Olaplex or have information to share? Reach out to Alex Bitter at abitter@insider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at (808) 854-4501 and Sindhu Sundar at ssundar@insider.com or Signal at (984) 377-3887.
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